Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity 4

All-in-one, multi-platform game development

Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity 4 introduces key game production concepts in an artist-friendly manner, removes the hurdles to understanding scripting. It enables independent game artists to learn how to produce casual games for mobile, desktop, and console platforms.

Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity 4 is perfect for those who would like to come to grips with programming Unity. You may be an artist who has learned 3D tools such as 3ds Max, Maya, or Cinema 4D, or you may come from 2D tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator. On the other hand, you may just want to familiarize yourself with programming games and the latest ideas in game production.

This book introduces key game production concepts in an artist-friendly way, and rapidly teaches the basic scripting skills you'll need with Unity. It goes on to show how you, as an independent game artist, can create interactive games, ideal in scope for today's casual and mobile markets, while also giving you a firm foundation in game logic and design.

The first part of the book explains the logic involved in game interaction, and soon has you creating game assets through simple examples that you can build upon and gradually expand.

In the second part, you'll build the foundations of a point-and-click style first-person adventure game—including reusable state management scripts, dialogue trees for character interaction, load/save functionality, a robust inventory system, and a bonus feature: a dynamically configured maze and mini-map.

With the help of the provided 2D and 3D content, you'll learn to evaluate and deal with challenges in bite-sized pieces as the project progresses, gaining valuable problem-solving skills in interactive design.

By the end of the book, you will be able to actively use the Unity 3D game engine, having learned the necessary workflows to utilize your own assets. You will also have an assortment of reusable scripts and art assets with which to build future games.

Sue Blackman has been an instructor in the 3D field for nearly 20 years at art schools and community colleges. She has been involved with the commercial development of real-time 3D engines for more than 10 years. In the past, she has been a contributing author for New Riders Press (Max4 Magic) and written for AMC Siggraph on serious games. She has written product training materials and instruction manuals for developing content with real-time 3D applications, used by multimedia departments in Fortune 1000 companies including Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, among others. In addition to writing and teaching, Sue has been the lead 3D artist on several games for Activision and its subsidiaries.